> But we legislated and plumbed this state for a different climate pattern, when annual winter rains reliably fell on Sonoma and points north, and a full Sierra snowpack reliably melted through the spring and summer to feed streams and irrigate orchards and farm fields. That era is long gone. The snowpack comes unpredictably, because a warmer climate means water that formerly stayed in the mountains as snow through the summer now melts sooner, or falls as rain and rushes westward to the sea in the winter, when we need it the least. A quick look at any satellite photo from a heavy-snow year reveals that no number of new dams could ever replace the snowpack’s formerly reliable volume.<p>The headline is the epitome of burying the lede. If you read to the bottom, the writer clearly lays out the actual thesis: rainfall is the same - the problem is that snowpack is seriously declining. Which is kind of like a moisture battery. This is why climate change can counterintuitively cause both "droughts" and floods.<p>I'll admit that it took the longest time for me to understand the concept myself.
1000 word opinion piece and not one mention of the Delta Smelt?<p>The author is right though, this climate is the norm. A better way to put it is that California has always been in drought. So when politicians say "drought", they actually mean "deficit". There's more than enough rain and snowpack, but we're not collecting enough of it to meet demand. We could collect more--at great expense--or use less.<p>As i mentioned with my opening quip, something like 50% of the water that we could collect is allowed to run into the sea. The somewhat infamous reason for this is the endangered Delta Smelt. The truth though is that there's actually no limit to the water that would be used. Growers would still be demanding more. We allow the creation of billionaires on water rights here, through the growing of insanely water-needy crops like almonds[1].<p>Whenever this subject comes up, I recommend reading "Cadillac Desert". It really opened my eyes about the history and politics of water in the West. The "drought" talk is all kind of a scam, and it's good to see articles that kind of hit on that.<p>[1] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Resnick</a>
The pricing for water in California is highly asymmetric, with urban users paying significantly more (one to two orders of magnitude more) for water than agricultural users. If agricultural users are charged a higher rate (or equivalently the state cuts back on their subsidies ) and "free' rights to water are regulated and distributed more evenly across the population then wasteful use of water will immediately become uneconomical. That is the right long term solution to aligning resource usage with available supply.
We use a lot of water growing nuts in California.<p>From 2015: <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts/" rel="nofollow">https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts...</a><p>"it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. <i>The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years.</i>"
We have the technology to solve this problem, and we've had it for thousands of years:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_cisterns</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujarat" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_stepwells_in_Gujara...</a><p>Los Angles piloted a "smart cisterns" program in 2015 that captured residential roof runoff in centrally monitored and operated cisterns, which could hold or release water according to flood conditions and local demand:<p><a href="https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-capture-stormwater-smart-cisterns/" rel="nofollow">https://stormwater.wef.org/2015/11/los-angeles-homeowners-ca...</a>
While the agriculture sector would love cities to go into drought mode and cut back on water usage, let's review a fun fact: agriculture isn't even in the top ten of industries contributing to state GDP[1]. However, agriculture uses 80% of the state's water.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-gdp-by-industry/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/304869/california-real-g...</a>
<a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/amp/" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/...</a><p>CA climate has been much drier in the past, even before global warming. We seem to have this discussion every few years when there's a drought, but quickly forget. It seems like we do the same thing with wildfires and earthquakes.
California has plenty of water for California. Now, whether it can continue to be a fruit and nut agricultural hub for the rest of the country is another thing to consider.
California needs more trees and less of those greenscaped, french style lawns. Nearly 70% of Los Angeles water is used to make small patches of green worthless non-native plants that have to be mowed once a week or you get a ticket. The city government is the worst offender too. They practically flood their parks and greenscaped nonsense every day with stupid amounts of water.<p>Worst of all is some places in California you aren't ALLOWED to remove the high maintenance, water sucking, worthless patch of grass because of some HOA or city regulation. They call a mulched, tree covered, sustainable and bare dirt yard "Ugly." Then they want to replace it with a fungus looking growth that has to be trimmed all the time by loud gasoline powered equipment that wakes night shift workers up at 9AM.<p><a href="https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/community/2017/08/09/city-wide-study-shows-how-much-water-urban-landscaping-really-uses" rel="nofollow">https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/community/2017/0...</a>
This sounds more like the local environment is just not able to support the large local population and agricultural. It's similar to the cause of housing issues and cost of living issues in that area - there's too many people.
PSA for us Euros that instinctively ignored latimes.com links since blocking us when GDPR came into effect: they now let us in! Time to unlearn the reflex.